The Mountain in the Sea

I'm giving it an extra star because I actually stuck with it and finished it. Nothing was technically wrong with this book but I put it down so many times and swore I wasn't going to pick it up again. I haven't DNFed a book yet and I think it's only my pride or masochism that left me coming back for more. I like the premise of finding other species with whom to communicate with on Earth and I will be rethinking eating takoyaki for a while. However, the fact that every character in this book was constantly grappling with what it means to be human in the most suffocating way possible took this down a lot of pegs for me. I really wanted more of the research side and while I appreciate Nayler's perspective that the octopi probably see us as monsters, I kept hoping the book would end sooner than it did rather than contemplate our destructive existence on Earth.